Meriendas are the new tapas

They are larger than canapés but smaller than starters, a plate of them costs no more than £6 and ideally you share them with friends. In a new café-lounge in Portobello, people are not snacking on Spanish tapas but Filipino meriendas.

Born in London to Filipino parents, 31-year-old Claire Buyson grew up eating Filipino food and opened her bubble tea and merienda lounge last December, Lakwatsa — pronounced Lakwatcha. With features including free wifi, an iPad as a jukebox and hanging chairs with plug sockets next to every seat, Lakwatsa is a modern spot for wired-up city folks and students. But the main draw is the food. The affordable menu is made up of tiny pan-Asian bites including garlicky prawn toast, tempura and yakitori skewers but its primary features are Filipino — made mostly using her mother’s recipes.

“Food is a big part of Filipino life,” says Buyson. “Everyone sits around sharing everything and all of the food comes at the same time. There’s no order. It’s not like you have one main thing.” According to Buyson, seasonings tend to be garlic, soy sauce and sugar. A classic Filipino dish is adobo — like stew in a pot, eaten with a spoon and fork, which Buyson has adapted by turning it into rice balls.

I try Adobo rice balls — chicken marinated in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic and wrapped up in sticky sushi rice,which are rich and slightly more than a mouthful, and lumpia Shanghai — a crispy, meaty and well-seasoned pork spring roll. The prawn toast — “they go mad for this” — has a garlicky Filipino touch, while a little bowl of spicy fried squid arrives with a sauce made with olive oil, soy, ginger, onions, chillies and lime juice.

Buyson considers the way Londoners mostly roll out of restaurants stuffed to the gills and thinks meriendas — which were traditionally eaten between lunch and dinner — are a different experience: “Think of it as five small meals a day rather than three large ones. Small meals throughout the day is how much we really should be eating — not one fat meal! Don’t scoff it down. If you come here you’re chilling, chatting and picking and then you’ve only had a few things and are not horribly full.”

Buyson also offers Filipino desserts such as pan de sal — like saltier brioche bread rolls — served as English afternoon tea is, with butter and jam. But don’t expect honey and marmalade: these were accompanied by ube (purple, sweet, grainy texture) and coconut jelly (glupey, sweet, delicious). Plantain and jackfruit fritters have crispy coatings and pleasingly mushy fillings, while Halo Halo (pronounced halla halla) is the most bizarre — consisting of a tall glass with layers of red beans, caramelised plantain, shaved ice, coconut jelly, piece of leche flan and ice cream.

There is also a menu of teas: bubble tea — like a buttery milkshake without the thickness and gummy tapioca balls floating at the bottom. My taro (like ube) was good; meanwhile ,“Tommy’s special” — named after assistant manager Tommy Cruz Davis — was like a lassi — made with milk, mango and coconut.

Buyson is glamorous, cool-headed and, judging by the fact that she barely took any time off for Christmas, exhausted. Having studied business management, where she worked after-hours in bars and restaurants, she started as a PA before rising to project manager at an investment company. When she showed the business plan — “that I’ve always had” — to her boss, he immediately passed it on to three investors. “It was like Dragons’ Den but they loved it,” she laughs.

Just as I’m trying to work out if I’ve heard of ube before, some Filipino ladies walk in and begin ordering excitedly. “Which jams would you like with your pan de sal?” Cruz Davis asks. “UBE, UBE,” they shout in unison before falling about laughing. When it arrives, they fall onto it immediately before sharing it between them.